Asia

The countries of Asia

The largest country here is China, covering 9 706 961 km².

The smallest is Maldives, at just 300 km².

Most people live in China — about 1.4 billion.

Mountains and rivers

The highest mountain we cover here is Mount Everest, 8 849 m above the sea.

The longest river is Yangtze, running 6 300 km.

Asia and the rest of the world

Roughly 59 in every 100 people on Earth live in Asia, on about 24 per cent of the world's land.

That works out at about 139.9 people for every square kilometre, against 56.6 for the world as a whole — so Asia is more crowded than the average.

The people are not spread evenly either: just 2 of the 46 countries hold half of everyone here.

Animals of Asia

30 of the animals on this site live in Asia, among them Tiger, Giant panda, Orangutan, Leopard, Snow leopard, Grey wolf, Red fox and Eurasian otter. Each one stands on the globe as a small figure once you zoom in close enough to find it.

How many continents are there?

There is no single right answer, which surprises most people. Schools in Britain, Australia and much of Asia teach seven continents, splitting North and South America. Schools in France, Italy, Spain and most of Latin America teach six and keep the Americas together. Some teach five, counting only the inhabited ones. The land has not moved; only the way people group it has.

This site uses six and keeps the Americas as one, because that is how the dataset behind these pages groups countries. Asia is one of those six. If you were taught a different number at school, you were not taught the wrong thing — you were taught a different convention.

Where a continent ends is just as much a decision. Europe and Asia sit on one unbroken piece of land, and the line between them was drawn by people, along the Ural mountains, rather than by any sea. That is why Russia and Turkey appear in lists for both.